It's no surprise that the president's has shady associates. It's still damning.

Yesterday's twin news—that Trump organization fixer Michael Cohen had confessed in court to multiple crimes including violating campaign finance law, and that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of bank fraud and other financial crimes—mostly serves to reinforce what we've known, or at least suspected, for awhile now. Trump, the real estate swindler who played a fake businessman on a reality TV show, liked to surround himself with a cast of shady characters. It did not take a psychic to see yesterday's news, or something like it, coming.

If there was anything like a revelation in yesterday's events, it was that Cohen implicated Trump in his scheme, saying that his illegal payoff of Stormy Daniels was done in coordination with a "candidate" and members of a campaign. Cohen did not explicitly name Trump, but there is only one candidate in this story, and he is now our president. Cohen, and his lawyer Lanny Davis, are all but suggesting that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal act. ("If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?" Davis tweeted.)

Trump has responded by turning on Cohen, the close associate he publicly defended as recently as April, tweeting that he would "strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." (Another non-surprise: There is no honor amongst fixers and campaign finance violators.) Trump's recommendation has the virtue of being good advice. But it is good advice that Trump himself did not follow.

Does it matter that this was a campaign finance violation? After all, just a few years ago, Barack Obama's 2008 campaign was hit with a $375,000 fine for errors in its own campaign finance reporting. In one sense, the history is useful to consider in that it suggests the prevalence of campaign finance violations. Spend enough time looking, and you might find related violations on nearly any large campaign.

In another sense, however, it's beside the point. The actions that Cohen took at the alleged direction of Trump were deliberately designed to deceive—not just the government, but, as The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes, the electorate. There were intended, according to Cohen's statement, to influence the outcome of the election. Even if you don't believe this should be treated as a crime, it remains a lie crafted to manipulate voters.

Yet that, too, is no surprise. Trump lies, repeatedly, about almost everything. His height. His steaks. His knowledge of the very hush-money payments that Cohen claims he made at Trump's direction. Trump is not exactly known for painful honesty.

Trump is who we thought he was. The Manafort and Cohen news only offers further confirmation. The fundamental lack of surprise, the sense that this was inevitable and that nothing has really changed, is likely to drive much of the political reaction—or lack thereof—going forward.

Yes, it's true that Trump is not a particularly popular president, but Trump remains quite popular with Republican voters—and Republican voters elect Republican members of Congress. As long as Republicans maintain congressional majorities beholden to a Trump-loyal voter base, it's unlikely that we'll see much of a response from the GOP. As Reason's Jesse Walker noted last night, this is a legal matter, but it will play out entirely along political lines.

Indeed, Trump and his defenders are already dismissing the Cohen case as beside the point. Neither Cohen nor Manafort should have broken the law, but what they did was irrelevant to the larger question at hand, which is Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.

That's true for the moment, but perhaps not for long. Cohen's lawyer said last night that Cohen would be willing to tell Mueller "all that he knows" about the Trump campaign—including "knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on." Granted, Cohen may not be the most trustworthy source, but then, when the subject is Trump, not-very-trustworthy sources are what you have. It's unlikely that this story will end here.

But if it did, the most straightforward lesson would be one we already know all too well: The president surrounds himself with crooks. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it won't. But it should.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

Two things stand out though:
1. Trump's crooks must either be very bad at being crooks, or very bad crooks, because they got found out.
2. One of Trump's campaign promises was to end this very kind of crookery.

rocks: "Maybe Trump is surrounded by crooks, but Hillary and Obama ARE crooks."

You're mixing apples and orange. Trump's crooks ARE crooks because have been either convicted by a court of law or have plead guilty. In contrast, Hillary and Obama have not been convicted of ANYthing. All you have are accusations;' and accusations do not make someone a crook. (If they were then it would be equally fair to claim that Trump himself was a crook already--just like you are claiming is the case with HRC & Obama.)

Also, did they find any top secret classified information on their servers? Mueller might wanna know, although so far he seems to think that kind of thing is perfectly normal. Oddly enough I can't find anything more recent than 2017, and that there are no concrete allegations of more specific wrongdoing.

At the time, it was a policy violation. One that was quite widespread, among both parties. The Bush White House had 22 million emails hosted on the RNC servers deleted.

Now it's a crime to not forward email. It doesn't have to be a configuration -- say a friend who also works at the White House sends something to your personal email by mistake, or because you're on the road or something. You can just forward that one, not everything.

It was unquestionably a crime for Hillary to delete the 30k emails that she hosted locally and never forwarded to .gov. So aside from the transmission of classified documents, the failure to follow statute and not just policy, the destruction of government documents, and the lies told to the FBI, she did nothing wrong.

The govt has a special server system, massively protected by firewalls etc, for classified e-mail, that is supposed to stop the transmission onto non-secure systems..
She not only sent classified information that she created but had her underlings alter the markings on some, so that it could be sent on her private system, avoiding the secure system's protections.
She knew damn well she would be handling classified information as SEC STATE, yet she opted to try to avoid oversight - also illegal - instead of following what she was supposed to do.
All criminal.

Happy Chandler|8.22.18 @ 7:17PM|#
"At the time, it was a policy violation."

You
Are
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Of
Shit.
She was SoS; her comm was to be part of the public record. Purposely and deliberately setting up a separate comm system to keep those records private was undoubtedly a crime, period.
And then destroying the evidence when it was subpoenaed was a further FELONY, dumbass.
You
Are
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Shit.

The amount of sunlight on every single person connected to Trump is unprecedented. The amount of resources spent going after every single person connected to Trump is unprecedented. And what do they have? Bad tax filings, campaign finance (the parking ticket of politics), and "lying" to the FBI. LIBERTARIANS should find issues with anyone going to jail over these things.

Never thought I'd see the day Reason celebrating the police state and politicization of the law.

And to add to what damikesc and TLBD say, Manafort is not "Trump's crook." He's been a fixture of every Republican presidential campaign and administration going back to Ford. He was just never put under such scrutiny as he got after spending ten weeks on Trump's campaign (and getting fired).

Plus, in terms of campaign finance law, having women sign NDA's before a campaign, or even during a campaign, is explicitly legal.

Unless, of course, Trump paid those women with campaign funds. Something that would not make a lick of sense considering his own personal wealth.

It's a clear attempt to try and suss up a sex scandal, no more and no less, but it remains to be seen if people actually care about that with Trump. In fact, it seems they don't care given past issues in the same vein.

That said, it's almost like Democrats and Mueller are trying to lay the same perjury charges that got Clinton impeached, which is absolutely hilarious. I guess they assume that the same thing that has actual precedent in not being 'enough' to convict (perjury involving allegations of sexual misconduct) will get a different result with a Republican. Curious.

I guess they assume that the same thing that has actual precedent in not being 'enough' to convict (perjury involving allegations of sexual misconduct) will get a different result with a Republican. Curious.

Yeah, I noticed that, too - "gee, this really backfired when the Republicans tried it, but this is us, so it'll work this time."

Yeah, it's almost as if Democrats want to make sure they're in the minority for the next decade or something. If they could at least sound like they're not having a mental breakdown (allegations of NAZI, Racist, and Criminal Collusion absent any proof whatsoever) moderates might be more inclined to hear them out.

But no, they double down on lunacy that only plays to the fringes of their own base. We'll see if their overwhelming control of the bureaucratic state's secretive workings is enough for them to get their way, I suppose, since I suspect they're suddenly terrified that they're losing the middle of their base due to their constant drum beat against their own voters.

They can't appeal to them directly without making a lie of their balkanizing tactics and losing their progressive-stack of voters, after all, but I suppose constantly calling the opposition Nazi's could work too. It certainly seems to lend fuel to the ANTIFA fire.

What have Democrats done? They have sat back and watched. They have attempted to use the Congressional investigation powers, but mostly have been blocked by Republicans.

Because they are in the minority and are quite literally powerless to do anything but sit back and watch.

But they sure seem intent on impeaching him, and they seem as desperate to get him on anything they can as the Republicans in Congress were to get Clinton in the 90s.

What we're discussing here in this little sub-thread is that they seem to be forgetting how badly that backfired on the Republicans in the 90s, and that if they win the House and spend the next two years going full Newt Gingrich, 2020 is likely to go poorly for them.

Happy Chandler|8.22.18 @ 7:08PM|#
You
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"Where do you get that? Pelosi said impeachment is not a priority."
Because she's realistic enough to understand it would go nowhere; she has no choice.
"Dick Durbin said it is too early for that.
Because he's realistic enough to understand it would go nowhere; he has no choice.
"Is there anyone aside from a few backbenchers pushing for it?"
So your point is that they would all love to do so, but they know it's a dead end?
You
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chemjeff radical individualist|8.22.18 @ 8:32PM|#
But they sure seem intent on impeaching him
"That's what Team Red wants you to believe."

No, dumbass, that's what team blue really wants:
"Democrats steer clear of Trump impeachment talk despite Michael Cohen guilty plea"
[...]
"WASHINGTON – Michael Cohen's guilty plea implicating President Donald Trump in a crime reverberated across the political landscape Wednesday, with Republicans rejecting talk of impeachment without evidence of Russian collusion. Democrats steered clear of the word, too, and zeroed in instead on what they called a "cesspool" of corruption engulfing the White House."https://globalnews.ca/news/4402975/
michael-cohen-plea-trump-
impeachment-talk-democrats/

They've avoided it for fear of being identified with that scumbag rent-seeker Steyer, who has properly 'poisoned the well' by trying to get Trump impeached for being Trump.
Team blue would launch an impeachment effort in a New York minute if they thought that you, that asshole fake rev, Tony and other assorted imbeciles represented the 'will of the people'. That hag (and you, loser) were handed a score-card 11/9/16. Idiotic losers like you and the rest of your brain-dead crew have yet to figure it out.
Fuck off.

Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer for the Trump organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors… This is a very significant story that's already causing waves in the legal circles around the White House.

… Weisselberg has true and deep visibility into the Trump Organization. Trumpworld's greatest fear is that SDNY investigators start prying deeper into the president's business affairs. Trump can't shut down such an investigation by firing Robert Mueller. This one's out of his hands.

The tweets are about to get very nasty. He goes back DECADES as Trump's Chief Financial Officer. Looks like Mueller hopes to wind this up before the midterms.

Look for the "loans" he got from Deutsche Bank, a convicted money-launderer for Russia – the ONLY bank that lent to him after all the bankruptcies. We already know he spent over $100 million on properties soon after – all cash, no mortgages. If that cash traces to Deutsche Bank – unsecured loans to the America's worst credit risk – by a Russian money launder… Do the math, he may literally owe his entire fortune to Russia, and WHY Putin owns him. And 90% those chips have fallen.

Make every Presidential candidate in the general election the subject of an investigation by a Special Prosecutor with millions of dollars in resources at his disposal. Do you honestly believe no one else would be exposed?

Happy Chandler|8.22.18 @ 7:12PM|#
"Many will have minor filing issues, like the Obama case. There will be little evidence that the candidate directed or even knew about the issues. Some fines and money returned."
So, Obo did it too? Thanks.

"Some will be found to have used their campaign as an ATM, like Duncan Hunter. They'll go to jail."
Irrwelevant to anyone other than a lefty imbecile.

And some will be caught on tape directing violations. They'll be the President."
What "violations", lefty imbecile?

"So....pretty much the same as now. This is a rare case. I think most campaigns are pretty scrupulous about campaign finance. There's plenty of money out there!"
Bullshit assertions.
Thanks for making it clear you have no point!
You
Are
Full
Of
Shit.

Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer for the Trump organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors… This is a very significant story that's already causing waves in the legal circles around the White House.

… Weisselberg has true and deep visibility into the Trump Organization. Trumpworld's greatest fear is that SDNY investigators start prying deeper into the president's business affairs. Trump can't shut down such an investigation by firing Robert Mueller. This one's out of his hands.

The tweets are about to get very nasty. He goes back DECADES as Trump's Chief Financial Officer. Looks like Mueller hopes to wind this up before the midterms.

Look for the "loans" he got from Deutsche Bank, a convicted money-launderer for Russia – the ONLY bank that lent to him after all the bankruptcies. We already know he spent over $100 million on properties soon after – all cash, no mortgages. If that cash traces to Deutsche Bank – unsecured loans to the America's worst credit risk – by a Russian money launder… Do the math, he may literally owe his entire fortune to Russia, and WHY Putin owns him. And 90% those chips have fallen.

So Drumpf fed his pathetic base all throughout his campaign with talking points about draining the political swamp. I bet it never crossed their soft minds that he would fill it back up with his own dirty bathwater!

Every president surrounds himself with crooks. You can't get into politics at that level without being a crook.

Absolutely. But there are different kinds of crooks. Obama was surrounded by the kind of Insider crooks who rarely get prosecuted. Trump's circle has included a lot of private sector crooks who do go to jail now and then.

Do you cry when you make posts like this? I mean about how fucking tortuously pathetic you know you are? I'm almost brought to tears myself. How hard it must be to feel like you have to believe bullshit every day, all day, just to get by. I mean, what's the point? Who would care if you started believing in things that are real? People smarter than you?

It's for my own records. Where do your get your supposed facts about the issues under discussion? You don't report them yourself, so you must be getting your extreme volumes of bullcrap from somewhere.

OK:
"Emails reveal how foundation donors got access to Clinton and her close aides at State Dept."https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/emails-
reveal-how-foundation-donors-got-access-
to-clinton-and-her-close-aides-at-state-
dept/2016/08/22/345b5200-6882-11e6-
8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?utm_
term=.2cbca4a77536
"Clintons Began Taking White House Property a Year Ago"http://articles.latimes.com/2001/
feb/10/news/mn-23723

The Mueller investigation began with preliminary inquiries in January of 17 (approximately). The claim that "The Mueller investigation isn't even close to this length." seems to be one of personal belief, not fact, and is increasingly approaching flatly wrong.

She did.
And the people who died there protecting her secret arms shipments for Syria spent 13 hours under intense and organized attack from a radical Islamic militia before receiving any relief or reinforcement from her and Obama, their commanding officers.

I usually just let your banality go with a stupid retort or eye roll, but fuck you for trying to not only deflect, but completely bury the truth of what the Obama Administration did in response to the attack. (I'm not conspiracy theorying anything about them letting the attack happen dipshit.)

Suderman now dutifully moves the goalposts. Sure none of this had anything to do with Trump, but Trump is associated with bad people and that is damning. Really?

Webster Hubble was Hillary Clinton's law partner and was the number 2 guy at Justice or close to it and wound up being convicted of two felonies. I don't recall Suderman ever finding that damning. Suderman is by far the most comical and histrionic of the reason staff.

How do you even look at yourself in the mirror? Jesus Christ what pathetic mush-mouthed desperate bullshit is going on here lately. If a person with a (D) after his name were implicated in 1/1,000,000th of the corruption that's only beginning to be uncovered, you'd soil yourself in outrage and fling your shit at Tucker Carlson's day-drunk fat stupid face on the TV and call everyone here a traitor to humanity for not personally volunteering to perform a citizens' arrest.

Technically speaking, you can't say he intentionally did so unless you can demonstrate he ordered the credit card software to be reconfigured from its default state. However someone in his campaign certainly did.

Hillary was investigated. Trump is being investigated. Hillary was exonerated. I do hope you're not one of those here screeching about "innocent until proven guilty" while claiming Hillary has done something illegal.

All Hillary being exonerated demonstrates is that, when the fix is in, the fix is in. Just from regular news accounts you can tell she committed crimes.

Look, the reason the Obama administration didn't have "scandals" isn't because it was clean as the driven snow, it was because the AG and DOJ were corrupted to the point where nothing that might implicate Obama would ever get followed up.

That's the bitter irony here: Relatively (But not absolutely!) clean administrations have scandals, because they're not corrupt enough to obstruct the mechanisms that uncover them. Particularly corrupt administrations are guaranteed to "not have scandals" because they take care to corrupt that process.

The only reason any of this is happening is because Trump didn't appoint somebody as corruptly loyal as Holder or Lynch to be AG.

Hey, Tony, in response to your "pizza shop kid fucking" snark, did you ever look at the (pre-deletion/pre-privatizing of) Alefantis' Instagram, the Instagrams of his followers, or the Instagrams of those he follows? Ever look at the art at Comet Ping Pong?

Sorry - haven't read the article closely, but I would say that if Trump were CEO of a major corporation and for exec positions had the turnover rate he's had as President, that would signal most to sell stock, though the board would likely force a resignation prior.

Note - I don't think he should be impeached over any of this, but losing so Manu key people so quickly does seem an issue.

There was never any evidence that Obama had knowledge or coordinated it.
With Obama for America (not his campaign or him personally) it involved reporting and being slow to return money from people who exceeded the limits. Not conspiring to make illegal contributions.

But leaving the cancer that is Trump to continue to kill the Republican party is not the worst political move considering the options (impeachment not being one, Republicans all being disgusting corrupt goblins).

I just explained that it's not an option you illiterate fucktard. It would be a symbolic action until a) Democrats get 2/3 of the senate or b) Senate Republicans decide they're finally willing to cut out the cancer. a) is not in the cards, but b) is not beyond the realm of possibility.

No doubt free-spirited independent-minded libertarians will cling to Trump's fat ass even after Senate Republicans decide to convict.

I think it's a moderate political pickle actually. Trump without any question deserves impeachment and conviction. And I doubt he'll gain the support Clinton did after his impeachment, because this is legit and not a bunch of cynical partisan horseshit.

But then we're stuck with Pence, which is a human-like creature that passes for sane in the Republican party these days. Given the American people's short attention span, he might even rehabilitate the image of the party. Not because anyone likes him. No one likes him. But being semi-coherent will provide a stark contrast with the shitshow he would replace.

I'm still for keeping Trump where he is, even though it's a big roll of the dice (by big I mean nuclear-size).

Nixon-era Republicans didn't have to contend with a FOX News-brainwashed base of support. The thing they're terrified of now are Trump supporters, and that's because Trump supporters are so fucking stupid they can't see what's going on in front of their stupid hick faces.

That's the thing it has in common with the Clinton impeachment. When presidents really violate the Constitution nobody mentions impeachment. It's always over some petty bullshit. I get the impression that everybody on "both sides of the aisle" wants to give the President--whoever it is--free reign to piss on the Constitution.

Exactly this. When presidents actually violate the constitution no one bats an eye. The left is losing its mind over things that Trump may have done before he got into office. None of those things have even come close to being proven despite unlimited resources trying to prove them.

Some of our best Presidents were surrounded by crooks. Warren Harding had the teapot dome scandal, but he was anti war and didn't mess with the economy. Grant's cabinet was totally crooked. LBJ-well, he was a crook hisself, but CIVIL RIGHTS!! made it ok. Lincoln had Chase. Nixon-nuff said.
Oh, the hypocrisy! How many President's claim to have the best and brightest who turn out to be the ordinary and dumber? Its the nature of the State, no market forces, no economic calculation, rent seeking, etc etc.

It's no surprise that the president's has shady associates. It's still damning.

MS Word would have proofread this.

But you know, it's not surprising because it's Donald Trump. It's not surprising because that seems to be what you have to do to "make it" in politics in this country (or most). You have to surround yourself with crooks.

I am hard-pressed to think of a worse candidate than Hillary that isn't her daughter or a Kennedy.

She was corrupt for decades. Thoroughly unlikeable. The most unfuckable woman in the history of the world (I know, she is a gay icon or something). She hated gay folks. Didn't much like black folks. Didn't much like Jews. Hung around with noted sub-human Blumenthal WILLINGLY. Friendly with noted liar and ALSO sub-human David Brock. Sold out to any foreign power who wanted her.

The first positive contribution she will make to the Earth in her entire existence is when she is decomposing.

Are you saying that Jeff Sessions is a Democrat, that he is in league with Democrats, that he is going easy on Democrats, or knows he doesn't have a case because all the shit over the Obama administration was investigated and found not to be criminal by the IGs and Congressional investigations, among others?

Are you saying that Jeff Sessions is a Democrat, that he is in league with Democrats, that he is going easy on Democrats, or knows he doesn't have a case because all the shit over the Obama administration was investigated and found not to be criminal by the IGs and Congressional investigations, among others?

Trump has responded by turning on Cohen, the close associate he publicly defended as recently as April, tweeting that he would "strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." (Another non-surprise: There is no honor amongst fixers and campaign finance violators.) Trump's recommendation has the virtue of being good advice. But it is good advice that Trump himself did not follow.

Obviously it can reflect poorly on your judgment when someone you worked with turns out to be a crook, but you're suggesting that some responses aren't better than others. Trump could have continued to stupidly defend him, or act like it was no big deal, or call everyone who criticized him a racist. You know, things that Progressive politicians do because they actively seek out crooks to work with and many of them are crooks themselves. Having a work association who turns out to be a bad egg isn't the worst thing if you can learn something from it.

Being able to point out examples of government misdeeds requires being able to distinguish misdeeds from not misdeeds. All you're doing now is to excuse the worst actors by lumping them in with everyone else. And you're doing it on purpose because they have (R)s after their names.

No, you haven't. You don't know anyone here. There aren't many people here who make such a herculean effort to not be a dick to you as sarcasmic does. But you're just as big of a dick to him as you are to John.

I thought I was being helpful. It's sarc's signature move. The more slogan-like a truth, the truer it must be. Both parties must be equally corrupt, because that is simpler to believe, and simple is true.

The thing that you keep forgetting is that Trump is not a politician, came from outside the government, and isn't even really a Republican.

"The Government," to the extent that you can even think of that that as a unified thing, is the force that is obsessively trying to tear Trump down because he's an outsider.

This is why a lot of libertarians are more inclined to pop some popcorn and watch as Trump ruffles feathers and exposes panic. It's not because we love Trump. The guy is obviously at least a petty crook and has a dictatorial manner, but he's not really dangerous because he's never going to be able to squeeze much power out of his position at all.

At least, he'll never be as dangerous as those who have the most stake in attacking him.

But you seem to be 100% incapable of removing your dualistic partisan lenses and instead have to frame every situation as the "Good Guys" vs. the "Bad Guys." It's no wonder your posts are getting increasingly unhinged and nonsensical.

The only thing different about Trump is that he's got a guy who's determined to expose them to Trump's disadvantage. You could have done the same job on Obama or Bush, if you'd had a special counsel going after them.

But, of course, a special counsel requires having an AG who will recuse, or admit that he's got a conflict; Genuinely corrupt administrations are too corrupt to permit special counsels to be appointed.

No president in history has been as surrounded by or infused with corruption as this one. Stop excusing the worst behavior by making false equivalences. It doesn't become people who are meant to keep an eye on government corruption.

Is this why libertarians are so pointless? A complete inability to think? Lincoln, Hitler, whatever, they're all just dirty politicians!

Do you ever stop raving long enough to wonder: how did we get here? How did we end up with an obviously crooked businessman like Trump as President? (And yes, I do think he's a crook.)

You have to go a little deeper into it than just bleating about Fox News.

I said long ago (including directly to you IIRC) that continually making the government more powerful is a mistake that draws the crooked like flies to a turd. And the corruption flourishes simply because our "leaders" (Ha! Maybe yours but not mine.) have so much to sell.

So yes, the past corruptions--and you blowing them off because the politicians had a (D) behind their names--is completely relevant to this discussion.

That's what keeping an eye on government corruption is about: having a memory of longer than five minutes duration.

It's just that I can't bring myself to believe the stupid horeshit lies peddled by Rush Limbaugh. Democrats aren't perfect, but there's a reason I chose them over Republicans. Many reasons. Many having to do with their relative levels of corruption.

I'd call it irony if it weren't so fucking dumb: you people constantly railing against all government in all forms serve only to absolve the worst actors. That's your job on earth, whether you know it or not.

You mean like attempting to apply uniform standards and rules? But that's not what modern wokatarianism is about. Rules and standards only matter when we get what we want. And when we don't we clutch our pearls and decry the coarsening of of public spaces that we were floating over on so very few years ago.

That's not what you're fucking doing and you goddamn well know it. You're selectively applying rules out the fucking ass. Democrats with a private email account are the most corrupt, while Republicans who pay off extramarital fuck buddies and collude with Russia to steal an election... eh, that's jus' politics.

There's nothing to defend because those accusations are bullshit. You know they're bullshit, and you also know they're one of the few straws you have to grasp at in order to pretend that you're making an argument about how incorrupt Trump must be... because Hillary? Or something?

" Why are we even talking about Clintons? What the fuck do Clintons have to do with anything?"

The original text said: "The president surrounds himself with crooks."

But it's clear that the current president is hardly alone in that matter, and in particular that his opponent was knee-deep in crooks (and rapists) herself. Tu quoque, it may be, but there's something to be said for demonstrating that the media hysteria around Trump's crooks reaches heights not seen when the crooks were surrounding the Clintons, not to mention the allegations against the Clintons themselves.

It doesn't excuse Trump's surrounding himself with crooks, obviously, but let's keep it in perspective. So far at least, few if any people associated with Trump have ended up dead. The same can't be said for Bill & HIllary.

Federal Prosecutor Mary Jo White was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate Clinton's last-minute pardon of Rich.[35] She stepped down before the investigation was finished and was replaced by James Comey, who was critical of Clinton's pardons and of then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's pardon recommendation.[36] Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously been Clinton's White House Counsel and chief of staff to Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore, and had had a close relationship with Holder.[23] According to Quinn, Holder had advised that standard procedures be bypassed and the pardon petition be submitted directly to the White House.[37][Notes 2] Congressional investigations were also launched. Clinton's top advisors, Chief of Staff John Podesta, White House Counsel Beth Nolan, and advisor Bruce Lindsey, testified that nearly all of the White House staff advising the president on the pardon request had urged Clinton to not grant Rich a pardon.[33] Federal investigators ultimately found no evidence of criminal activity.[34]

"Former President Jimmy Carter, a fellow Democrat, said, "I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in his pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion, that was disgraceful."[25] Clinton himself later expressed regret for issuing the pardon, saying that "it wasn't worth the damage to my reputation."[8]"

Note that Clinton didn't regret it because of the guy being a crook, he regretted because of the damage to his reputation.

1) Israel is an ally. Marc Rich was important to Israel. The pressure from an ally was important to the decision. I am an anti-Likud (((Zionist))).
2) Pardoning can be a crime, at least a high crime and misdemeanor.
3) It may have been a bad decision. It wasn't corrupt or crooked. It may have been a good decision.
4) I don't think John Ashcroft was in the bag for Clinton.

I see. So, when a Clinton does it it's merely doing his patriotic duty to an important ally, and not selling influence to a foreign power.

That's some mighty powerful rationalizing you got goin' on there.

Please read through the account of this guys' crimes, acknowledge all the money the Clintons indisputably received from his ex-wife (almost like he knew he should try to hide what he was doing), acknowledge that Jimmy Carter publicly called it corrupt and shameful, and that Bill Clinton himself admitted it was a serious blow to his credibility (even though it wasn't technically illegal), and then explain to me how "it may have been a good decision."

I think testimony by two former heads of Mossad, who confirmed that Rich provided assistance to Israeli intelligence is important.
I think testimony from Abe Foxman and Ehud Barak are important.
I think testimony that the tax filings were not unreasonable played a role.

I think testimony by two former heads of Mossad, who confirmed that Rich provided assistance to Israeli intelligence is important.
I think testimony from Abe Foxman and Ehud Barak are important.

Why?

Rich had made substantial donations to Israeli charitable foundations over the years, and many senior Israeli officials, such as Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert, argued on his behalf behind the scenes.[27] Many leading figures of the Jewish world such as Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose organization had received over $250,000 from Rich over the years also wrote to President Clinton for Rich's controversial pardon.

Hmm.

I think testimony that the tax filings were not unreasonable played a role.

"In 1983 Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted on 65 criminal counts, including income tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the oil embargo (at a time when Iranian revolutionaries were still holding American citizens hostage).[7][18] The charges would have led to a sentence of more than 300 years in prison had Rich been convicted on all counts."

And you think that whimsical application of rules is? If you don't have rule of law you have rule of man. That actually is relatively central to libertarianism. Now if you want to whine that it isn't fair because there are too many laws, then something something forest for trees.

Clearly you didn't bother to read the link. You seem to honestly believe that you can just feel your way through every situation. Laws are only optional. Because some laws are bad, all laws are bad (unless I like them). I'm not pretending anything is arbitrary aside from the application. You are DEMANDING arbitrary enforcement. And you genuinely can't understand how that capriciousness leads to the very tyranny that you claim to be worried about. In fact you assume that a uniform set of rule enforcement must lead to death camps.

Is there ever a circumstance where a law is bad enough that you shouldn't follow it? If so, by what principle can you decide that?

You seem to think I'm playing some sort of game, or being overly simplistic, but all you can do in response is keep repeating that all laws have to be followed all the time or else some fundamental libertarian principle is being abandoned.

If you think I'm arguing for selective enforcement of law, you are mistaken. But sometimes you have to stand up to bad laws even when there will be negative consequences for yourself. Civil Disobedience, we call that.

To put it another way, if following a law requires you to violate the NAP, the law is wrong. If the law is itself a violation of the NAP, the law is wrong. Saying that there is such a thing as laws that are wrong is not the same thing as saying that it is entirely a subjective and intuitive matter to decide which laws are wrong.

If I decide that the law against murder doesn't apply to me, I am wrong.

No I wouldn't say that either. My point was just that for a society to function at the basic level you need at least the rule of law. If you want it to prosper, you need property rights, which is the basis of the NAP.

Ignoring the law should be a function of your recourse to bad laws. Yes the NAP is a good indicator as to whether a law is just, but it cant stand on it's own without the rule of law in the first place.

This is also a reason I think the left is mostly evil, no matter their intentions. Rule of law means nothing to them, property rights mean nothing to them. If you wanted an antithesis to my above ingredients, it would be the left, and that is precisely why they are far more dangerous than conservatives. They put all the ingredients for society to disintigrate, as can be seen countless times in recent history.

If there is no legitimacy to laws by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates, and you cannot initiate force against anyone according to the NAP (which is axiomatically accepted and somehow different in that regard), then precisely what is your justification for punishing someone for murder? You were not murdered, so what is the basis for you acting?

You are of course free to exercise civil disobedience whenever you wish. There may be consequences for doing that. I may or may not agree with those consequences, just as I may or may not agree with your interpretation of a NAP violation. And then?

And to further answer your question off the top of my head the only times I can think of where the Rule of Law would violate the NAP, they would also violate equal application, e.g. I can't take someone's stuff or kill them because they don't have the right eye color or I don't like them. The progressive income tax would fall into that category, but I don't expect to win that battle any time soon, and I wouldn't throw out the rule of law to achieve it.

You're reading things in when you frame my position as "there is no legitimacy to laws by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates."

I never said that.

What I said was "there is no legitimacy to laws solely by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates when those laws violate the NAP."

Which is why I ask you the same question I keep asking Tony - if the legitimacy of law is solely "by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates," then by what principles do we condemn slavery prior to the Civil War? By what principles do we condemn the Nazis rounding up the Jews? By what principles was it okay for the Founding Fathers to rise up against their king?

I may or may not agree with those consequences, just as I may or may not agree with your interpretation of a NAP violation. And then?

Perhaps we discuss the specifics of my crime and try to persuade one another of the superiority of our respective positions? In my experience, people tend to have a natural sense of what is just and what isn't. But it may turn out that I go to my death feeling martyred by an unjust society, and you may nod approvingly at my execution believing me to be misguided in my zealotry. Shit like that happens.

Applying the NAP as your supreme principle isn't perfect, but can you propose something better than a simple "majority rules" as the alternative?

Sort of like Burke vs. Paine and the French revolution compared to the American revolution. Burke may have ended up being more correct than Paine, but ultimately he wasn't right about everything, even if modern conservatives believe so.

You're reading things in when you frame my position as "there is no legitimacy to laws by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates."

Really?

You're pretending law is arbitrary, and that things are right and wrong simply because the government says so.

*cough*

Which is why I ask you the same question I keep asking Tony - if the legitimacy of law is solely "by virtue of them being selected by a majority of society or their delegates,"

Ask it 15 more times. Oh, and insert the solely now which has no impact on the original question at all. That's pretty good faith right there. How about answering mine? I note that you haven't commented on my murder question.

But since I did answer your question, I'll now answer your modified question as well. The basis of most laws will still lie within some moral framework such as the NAP or the Golden Rule. There will also be some procedural laws necessary for reasons of coordination, e.g. traffic laws. So they are not solely created out of whole cloth by a majority or their delegates. But the other reality that you don't want to face is that selective application of laws is much more likely to result in the current majority imposing its immediate values on you. Having that framework to bind that majority (really convince it to not exercise its power) is reality irrespective of any philosophical navel gazing.

It is just business. Trump's fans won't care. They think having secret foreign bank accounts and creative tax shelters are just shrewd business practices that all rich and successful people do. Trump will be okay. Some in Trump's circle, however, will be searching for ways to retroactively declare their secret foreign holdings.

"They think having secret foreign bank accounts and creative tax shelters are just shrewd business practices that all rich and successful people do. "

Trump is a clown and a stain on the republic, bit I think that because I'm a libertarian and I also think the govt doesn't deserve a cut of his money, so hiding it is quite fine, no matter one's politics. Yes even Hillary would get my support.

I'm no defender of Trump, but what is "illegal" about the payoff to Stormy Daniels, and why should it be? I haven't been paying close enough attention to this story to understand what is so egregious here.

what is "illegal" about the payoff to Stormy Daniels, and why should it be?

That it was made too close to the election, and was likely done to keep her from spilling information that might affect the campaign. That made it, in a certain view, an unregistered campaign donation, and is thus a violation of campaign finance laws.

It's not just Cohen's word. Unless you think that an office led by a Trump appointee would file false documents that are easily verifiable to the court. Mueller is so powerful that he got Trump's people to lie to get him!

If paying someone to keep quiet for an election is a problem, then paying someone to talk about something should also be a problem. Paying for any opposition research would be a problem. Paying for anything that might affect an election would be a problem. Is the issue simply whether it was noted formally on campaign expenditures or not?

Learn how the laws work. If it is solely for the campaign it is against the law, if it is not solely for the campaign, it is not against the law.

The real danger is that SDNY is trying to paint it as a conspiracy. Something a libertarian should reject. However you're not a libertarian, just a masochistic moron content to get completely embarrassed every time something comes out of your stupid mouth.

None of that is true, and if it were, none of it is illegal. Lots of things that a candidate does that they pay for themselves out of their own pockets benefits the campaign. That doesn't mean that they have to report them. They might buy new clothes, take a public speaking course or any number of things that effect the campaign. Doesn't mean that those things come under the purview of the FEC. Mark Levin has quoted case law on this topic that I can't seem to recall.

Supposedly it's an illegal campaign expenditure, because he only paid out the hush money to keep her quiet during the campaign, and it wasn't reported on the FEC filing as a campaign expenditure. If it had been reported it would have been legal, but kind of pointless.

The theory requires you to assume, of course, that Trump only cared enough to pay hush money because of the campaign, and not, say, because he didn't want people knowing he'd cheated on his wife.

This whole thing is about opinion. Congress doesn't even have the power to impeach him because he was not an official during the time of the alleged crime. The problem is that the founders put no check on the power of Congress for impeachment, so the ONLY thing that matters is public opinion.

In theory, the House could file impeachment because they all liked Diet Pepsi and the president didn't.
Getting the Senate to find the president guilty of those charges rising to "high crimes and misdemeanors"
might be harder but a majority could so find, right? Whether the citizens of the country would stand for impeachment and removal, on such flimsy grounds, is also another story. All this noise is about taking back the House in 2018, the Senate and the White House in 2020, and rolling back the Trump-endorsed legislation.

ANYTHING that a majority of the House and 2/3 of the Senate decide is impeachable is, in fact, impeachable. Nowhere are "high crimes and misdemeanors" defined. That is left up to the aforementioned bodies.

Completely irrelevant. To repeat: Cohen and the prosecutor can agree to any damn thing that the so desire. They can agree that the acceleration of gravity is 100,000 meters per second per second or that Trump is a Really Bad Person because of Reasons. That has ZERO bearing or impact on Any. Other. Party.

You've been snookered by lawyer. Don't be sad, you weren't the first, and won't be the last.

Also, doesn't matter that it was related to the campaign. See my other comments, and TLBDs as well. Just because something benefits a campaign doesn't automatically bring it under the purview of the FEC.

Yes, Trump surrounds himself with crooks, but no more than the rest of them. The DC culture is so incestuous most of these people have worked together in the past. Let's not forget that Tony Podesta was working with Manafort on one of the deals he's in trouble for. My biggest fear in all of this is that it will be used as an example of a 'Washington Outsider' administration to scare people into voting for career politicians for the next 1000 years. And, he's really no different than the rest of them in a lot of respects. He might be a bigger, louder dick with zero polish. But, he's no more of a narcissistic control freak that plays loosey goosey with the laws than the career politicians. And, I'm sorry to see that lesson getting lost in the screeching hatred for Trump. Not that he doesn't deserve it. It just makes me sad.

Hillary should have won! (Hillary should be inside a prison, for a loooooong time) Trump's a Racist (as opposed to the Democrats whose policies broke the Black Family and trashed inner city schools, probably past repair) Trump is Literally Hitler! (Trump is, figuratively, a glad-handing political Boss, like the ones that used to own the Democrat Party. OTOH, Stalin and Mao, both past faves of the Progressive Left, made Hitler look like a piker)

Trump won. Other than the Tariffs he is using to wage economic war BACK on the Europeans and the Chinese, his economic policies seem to be sounder than any we've seen in a while. So, he doesn't favor open borders. Neither do the voters. Not too surprisingly, since the mainstream politicians who DO favor open borders do so because they want to commit vote fraud.

There are worse possibilities than Trump's. Hillary springs to mind. She has the morals of a three dollar whore and less class.

Well, Bill Clinton was a worst a rapist, plus was impeached. HIllary 100% broke national security laws but was given a pass by Comey and the rest of the Obama administration:

Comey: "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

HIllary and BiIl's "foundation" was a graft-as-charity scheme for Uranium One.

"As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

"Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation's donors.

Look - just because it so happens that the Clintons keep coincidentally making decisions that benefit people who just recently give them large sums of money doesn't mean anything at all. It was all technically legal. Nothing to see here.

If it was OK for Bill to get blown in the Oval Office (surprised that #METOO is not all over the obvious harassment that constituted even if consensual due to the power imbalance involved), it's probably OK that Trump paid for non-disclosure from some of his dalliances, especially if it was from his own pocket and not under the bailiwick of the campaign.

Its not like we didn't know Trump slept around before he got elected...

Being an adulterer is not the crime anyone is investigating Trump for.

And Clinton got his. Ms. Sen. holy-pants (D-NY) got Franken's scalp and declared by fiat that Clinton should have resigned for his BJ. Oh also he was fucking impeached and embarrassed on a global scale (by adulterers and kid fuckers, as it happens).

No. It's a reminder that there is a double standard of accountability. Democrats get let off, Republicans can swing in the breeze. Barack "Jug Ears" Obama runs the crookedest administration since Woodrow Wilson's, and he gets to claim that he was 'scandal free'. Shrillary out to be behind bars, and that's just for what we KNOW she did. Her husband, former President Bill "I can't find my pants" Clinton should have gone to trial for rape, sexual harassment, and perjury.

But Donald Trump 'surrounds himself with crooks'.

Look, I don't expect anything better from the Mainstream Media; they are the bought and paid for propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. I expected better of Reason.

You don't like Trump. We get it. But he didn't conspire to spy on a Presidential campaign. That would be Obama, Clinton, and the Justice Department stooges.

Clever move by Mueller to have Cohen plead guilty to the campaign finance charges that he would never get a conviction in court for. As long as the funds didn't actually come from a campaign account Cohen and Trump would be in the clear. And we already know that Cohen fronted the money and was reimbursed by Trumps personal funds.

Even ethics watchdogs said it was an abuse of prosecutorial power to claim private hush money for bimbo eruptions was a campaign finance violation:

All the salacious details prosecutors offered up to prove that Edwards is, indeed, despicable, were not enough to persuade the jury to convict him," said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who directs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. She criticized the Department of Justice, calling this "a lousy case" and a waste of taxpayer money.

Another watchdog group, the Center for Competitive Politics, said in a statement from its president, David Keating: "The case should never have been brought.... Prosecutors should stop trying to use vague laws to criminalize politics."

There's an actual agency devoted to paying off victims for legislators.

We get it. Y'all don't like Trump. I'm not that fond of the situation myself. Now if we could focus on what the problem really IS, rather than springboard this opportune moment to get that one guy we don't like and otherwise shut our opportunistic little pie hole to the endemic problem, that would be fucking swell.

Why wasn't there as much interest in the truth when assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ukraine ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were actually recorded planning the coup in Ukraine that ousted the democratically elected pro Russian president?

Sid Vicious Blementhal was just a paragon of virtue was he not ? Does this Suderman dimwit think Politicians surround themselves with reincarnates of mister Rogers ?
What a bullshit article telling me nothing new . I already knew Trump is cheezy scuz ball , but I am digging his Judges and gutting the EPA . The exact reasons I voted for him.

After the Clintons and Obamas, Trump is the real problem? Seriously? No one had more criminals around them than the Clintons. What people did before they even knew the President is not his fault. Do you actually think during discussions about Manafort taking over campaign, he told Trump about all the crap he did in 2005-2010? Seriously?

So Drumpf told his pathetic base all throughout his campaign about draining the political swamp and they ate it up. I bet it never even crossed their soft minds that he would fill it back up with his own dirty bathwater!

Peter Suderman: You say that Trump is a "real estate swindler". Who did he swindle and how? Name names, and describe the fraud or retract.

You claim that Cohen and Trump broke some campaign finance law. Quote the law and what they did to break it. You can't, because they didn't, notwithstanding Cohen's guilty plea. (Why he plead so, you and I will probably never know.)

Trump is not a libertarian, but I think that he has a good streak of libertarianism inside, and I believe that Rand Paul is helping to bring it to fore.

Translation: ten buyers out of a few hundred were looking for an excuse to pull out when they realized that this wasn't a good investment and they still took a 10% loss on their deposit because they really had no case

Of course the crimes that Obama supposedly got away with are to be defined by his most deranged critics. Which means that Trump can get away with anything, since I'm sure Alex Jones has a theory somewhere of how Obama is literally guilty of rape and murder.

BTW, it is hard to find specifics in the D arm-waving, but it seems the facts are these:
1) Trump (still allegedly) caused hush-money to be paid to prostitute(s)
2) That money was his personal money
3) The charge is therefore that his personal money benefited the campaign, and is therefore an illegal contribution?
Am I reading the straw-grasping correctly?

Even with the most generous interpretation you're saying that you have absolutely no standards of personal conduct you wish to apply to presidents of the United States. Even if there were no crimes (and there probably were), he's still an adulterous shitbag of a human being paying hush money to his side fucks and who embarrasses America every moment he breathes. And you're OK with all that.

Oh, goody! One more Tony bullshit post to dismantle.
Given that Tony has the intelligence of a high-school junior (perhaps), this is like the proverbial 'fish in a barrel. You asked for it, shitbag, here goes:

Tony|8.22.18 @ 10:48PM|#
"Even with the most generous interpretation you're saying that you have absolutely no standards of personal conduct you wish to apply to presidents of the United States."

Before you accuse others of a lack of morals in judging the conduct of a POTUS (which was not the point at all) would you care to comment on FDR dying at his retreat while "entertaining" Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd?
Or Clinton's documented BJ in the Oval Office and his (all but admitted) screwing of any meat the AK HP could find?
------------------------------------
"Even if there were no crimes (and there probably were), he's still an adulterous shitbag of a human being paying hush money to his side fucks and who embarrasses America every moment he breathes. And you're OK with all that."
So you are willing to demand Trump be held to a higher standard, regardless of any possible crimes, than your fave, pathetic, POTUS. Do I have that right, shitbag?
-----------------------------------

"I will remember that the next time a Democrat is in office."
Goody for you, you pathetic piece of shit.
I live in SF where the Ds have not yet managed to screw up the views, but have done their best to spend huge sums to attract bums. I'd suggest you show up here and perhaps even speak with some gay folks who might suggest you are an imbecile.

I suppose you live in comfort knowing your fellow Republican voters are too fucking dumb to realize that they've become moral relativists to such an extent it would make the liberals in academia you used to criticize blush.

Not commenting beyond the "Yes, it's true that Trump is not a particularly popular president," line.

He's been at, or within a couple percentage points, of the approval rating of most recent presidents THE ENTIRE TIME. He's actually been higher than Obama was at the same points a good chunk of the time too.

So to say he is magically super unpopular is simply not true. That dumb article linked to for proof talked about the Dems becoming stronger on the generic ballot... Which is an outright lie. Their lead has been shrinking for most of this year. How much spinnier can you get???

Now he may or may not win reelection. The Rs might not win the mid terms. A lot of this is up to swing state voters... But he is more popular than congress, and half the federal agencies... He's not especially hated, and anyone who says he is is full of it.

If you cherry pick the polls where he does the best (the ones with the lowest polling standards) he is comparable to other presidents and within a reasonable distance (a few percentage points). However the aggregate of polls on this topic are clear; he started in the high 30's (real bad) to low 40's (still real bad), and has made a modest improvement to hover in the mid 40's. A Rasmussen poll put him at 50...that's one of his BEST, and this is for an early first term prez, with a booming economy. I mean cmon you have to know that is not the norm right? You have seen other presidents and their approval ratings before this point in time? They spent a good amount of their first couple years above the 50% mark.

Most polls are still having him trail obama by a few points at this analogous time in his presidency...when a historic recession was starting for O, meanwhile trump still has a booming economy. The aggregate of both of their polls has trump consistently trailing obama for this entire analagous period of time, never above him. I think one of the few polls he actually beats O in is that recent Rasmussen poll that had trump at 50%. They are not known for good polling standards.

Not to mention he has consistently high disapproval ratings in most polls as well.

I voted for the guy, but the stats are out there, and his approval is significantly lower than almost every other prez.

I'm beginning to wonder if Reason is a libertarian site anymore. I keep seeing all these hysterical articles about campaign finance law violations. Doesn't Reason know that libertarians regard campaign finance laws as inherently unconstitutional violations of political liberty? And where's the skepticism about out of control special prosecutors given free rein to abuse government power?

Yep and Obama and both Clintons surrounded themselves with some real straight-lacers........how did this completely partisan hack narrative even get accepted for print? kind of disappointed...you can make the argument your making but to a better "Reason" article would of been about the whole swamp and you could have used Trump hirers to emphasize just how bad it is but only discussing Trump leads the impression this is just something he did....so what is the point, what is the reader supposed to learn from this?

Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer for the Trump organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors… This is a very significant story that's already causing waves in the legal circles around the White House.

… Weisselberg has true and deep visibility into the Trump Organization. Trumpworld's greatest fear is that SDNY investigators start prying deeper into the president's business affairs. Trump can't shut down such an investigation by firing Robert Mueller. This one's out of his hands.

The tweets are about to get very nasty. He goes back DECADES as Trump's Chief Financial Officer. Looks like Mueller hopes to wind this up before the midterms.

Look for the "loans" he got from Deutsche Bank, a convicted money-launderer for Russia – the ONLY bank that lent to him after all the bankruptcies. We already know he spent over $100 million on properties soon after – all cash, no mortgages. If that cash traces to Deutsche Bank – unsecured loans to the America's worst credit risk – by a Russian money launder… Do the math, he may literally owe his entire fortune to Russia, and WHY Putin owns him. And 90% those chips have fallen.

Both parties have declined under Trump (YAY). Republicans have fallen from +3 to -4, a 7% LOSS under Trump
Each tribe, of course, beleeeebs, it is the majority. All of America is waiting for them to save them